“And besides, who needs to go to the moon?” I say, splashing in a bit of our old playfulness. “As long as we take care of Earth, I like it right here.”
Rory’s shoulders perk up, and he’s standing straighter again. “You sure?”
I sense that he’s just going to ask me it this once, and then he’ll take me at my word. So if I’m having doubts, I need to tell him now. But I’m not.
Because in this pocket of calm amid all the noise from the chanting crowd and honking lorries and squawking gulls circling the parliament spires, I have complete clarity that a low-key life with Rory is exactly the sort of success that best serves me.
I used to think that clarity would come in a lightning-bolt moment. A sudden jolt of “when you know, you know.” But it turns out that clarity isn’t something sharp or sudden or stormy. It’s soft and slow and subtle, much more like a prolonged sunrise than a shock wave.
“I’m sure,” I say with a firm nod of my jaw.
Rory’s eyes are getting watery, and he’s crinkling his nose like he’s trying to keep from crying. “Stupid allergies,” he mutters with a self-deprecating smile that tumbles into a laugh.
In the movies, this would be where he’d match my speech with an equally sappy declaration of love. But that’s not Rory, and I don’t want it to be. It means so much more just standing here with each other,foreach other.
“I can’t believe you quit,” he says, the bounce back in his voice.
“It was a pretty great moment,” I tell him, reliving the livid shock on Harold’s face. “You would’ve been proud.”
“I’m always proud of you,” he says with that awkward lilt that comes out when he’s trying to vocalize his feelings. “And always will be.”
It means so much more because I know he doesn’t say it lightly. He’s putting his faith in me, and I’m putting mine in him. And both of us are putting it in something bigger than ourselves that we’ll have to learn from and lean on during the hard times and the inevitable moments when we let each other down because, though we’ll try to be good to each other, we can’t be gods to each other.
I want to love him with all the parts of me I’ve lost and found again. Like I’m trying to love myself with all those beautiful, broken bits too.
Rory kisses me right there, in the middle of the Thames path as pedestrians push by. I could keep making out all day, but I don’t want his PDA-related stress to kick in, so I look around for an alcove of privacy. The nearby telephone box stands empty, door slightly ajar as if specifically placed there for this purpose.
Tugging him inside, I close the door behind us and we resume where we left off. His hands are in my wind-blown hair, and we’re pushed against the glass-paned wall, making out like two teenagers who’ve snuck out of their houses.
And that’s what our love story is, really. Rory’s my childhood sweetheart, the one I didn’t meet until I was over thirty years old. It was written in the stars the whole time, the stars we both looked up at from our backyards, just a few miles apart.
I didn’t have to audition or fight for this love, so I was quick to discount it as something lesser. Something too simple. But the truth is that intentionally loving someone day in and day out is the most complex and beautiful thing in the world, with all the layers you unpack and the trust you build up. That’s what I want with Rory.
We don’t have to get there overnight. The growth can happen over a series of many dawns and dusks, noons and moons. There’s a feeling that it will keep getting better, not in a linear sense perhaps, but in a cumulative one.
Abruptly, the door to the booth swings open. A tourist stands there, camera around her neck, clearly hoping to pose for a photo op with Big Ben in the background. She gives a start at seeing us tangled up together.
“Sorry,” I say with a girlish giggle. “We’ll just be another minute.”
“Or another hour,” Rory mutters as the flustered tourist slams the door shut and leaves us alone together.
The afternoon sun pokes through the London haze, transforming the splotched telephone box windows into prisms of stained-glass art.
EPILOGUE
It’s early autumn in Islington, much like the day I first spotted Rory on the bus. Upper Street is shimmering under a fresh coat of rain, asphalt and cobblestones aglow with refracted headlights. It’s late afternoon, that crossover period when the Victorian lampposts are already switched on, but the daylight hasn’t yet faded.
Across the street, the King’s Head pub still serves as a refuge for the weary, though Jules no longer works there. The awning of Gail’s bakery flaps in the feisty wind as customers crowd in for the same scones, almond croissants, and flat whites I remember.
The fishmonger remains as pungently recognizable as ever, and next door, Marlow House is just as characterful with its red terracotta and sloping dormers. The aqua-colored door has been repainted a sleek black, but otherwise it looks the same.
Nostalgia rises to the surface, along with relief that I don’t actually have to go back in time and relive that frantic stage of life.
It’s almost like Islington is unaltered since I left, while just about every part of my life has radically changed. Except for the person at my side.
Rory’s still there, still with that spring in his step and that softness in his soul, even as his hairline recedes and sun spots dot his skin.
It’s fall break for Kalamazoo Public Schools, where Rory teaches fourth grade, and he surprised me with a trip to London—our first time back since we lived here. We’re celebrating eight years since the day that we had our first conversation on the bus. It’s not a date that he remembered, but I did, so he marked it in his calendar when I first mentioned it, and makes a point to always do a little something for it.
